For the last year and a half I have been eating a plant-based diet. This means I don’t eat any animal products, also known as ‘being vegan’. People have two reactions when I tell them my food preferences. A small minority are really interested and ask me a bunch of questions about what I eat and how I feel. The majority of people react to it like I am personally offending them by my food choices. The more hilarious people respond with the highly original joke “How do you know if someone is a vegan? They will tell you!”.

My favorite advice to give people, especially young people, is "embrace your weirdness". I’m not suggesting you necessarily rock up to a job interview with blue lipstick, though in certain contexts that could work. More, I am suggesting that you do all those things you feel drawn to doing without first calculating whether it’s normal. Normal is boring. In a cluttered and crowded world ‘normal’ will not help you stand out.

In 2018 my word for the year was CALM. I have always felt like the proverbial duck: seemingly serene and calm to others while frantically paddling under the water. I believe deeply that the best outcomes result from being truly present to my circumstances and my goal was to feel in that zone on a daily basis. Like Neo seeing through the Matrix, I wanted to unplug from the machine.

Those days that challenge you and cause you to question everything. Those moments that tease you with the idea of giving up.

I have bad days all the time.

How we deal with the bad days is what defines us.